THE CONSPIRACY SURROUNDING THE 2016 WORD OF THE YEAR

by Howard Richard Debs

Merriam-Webster has succeeded in its attempt to stop “fascism” being named its word of the year: the dictionary publisher’s word of 2016 is “surreal”. —The Guardian, December 19, 2016

They sat at a table
outside of Clary’s Café
the free lance journalist
and the book editor of
the New World Post.
It was early in the morning
the literary buffs who visit
Savannah usually show up
after noon to see the place
featured in Berendt’s Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil
so it was mainly a few locals eating
breakfast fare hot buttered grits
and the house special egg
concoction hoppel poppel.

“The Morning News squashed
my story. Too sensitive right now.
My source is reliable. She says the word
was number one in searches. She says
Merriam-Webster got a call,
I quote her in the piece:
‘Pick something else, we don’t
care how you get it done’ that’s what
they were told to do. So
they put out that tweet begging
people to look up other words.
It’s a cover-up for sure.
‘Surreal’ trumps ‘fascism’—
no way.”

Howard Richard Debs received a University of Colorado Poetry Prize at age 19. After fifty years in communications, and an Educational Press Association of America Distinguished Achievement Award, he resumed his creative pursuits. Finalist and recipient 28th Annual 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards, his work appears internationally in numerous publications including Yellow Chair Review, Silver Birch Press, Syzygy Poetry Journal, Dime Show Review, The Clear Poetry 2015 Anthology. His essay "The Poetry of Bearing Witness" appeared in On Being - On The Blog, and his photography in select publications including Rattle online where he served as “Ekphrastic Challenge" artist and guest editor. His full length work Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words is forthcoming from Scarlet Leaf Publishing in early 2017.

THE PROBLEM OF WHITENESS

by Darrell Petska

Snow-covered Abraham Lincoln
statue in front of Bascom Hall
 Photo by Jeff Miller, University
of Wisconsin-Madison Photo Library.

Republican legislators in Wisconsin are threatening to reject the University of Wisconsin-Madison's requests for additional state funding unless an elective course they find offensive is cancelled and its professor is fired. Rep. Dave Murphy, chairman of the Wisconsin Assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he believes the course “The Problem of Whiteness” contributes to “the polarization of races in our state.” —Slate, December 22, 2016 

Some rubes in America's Dairy Stand
say U'd better teach just what they command
or they'll wave their Nazi luger
i.e. hold back on their lucre—
curdling Dairy into the New Reich Land.

Darrell Petska's writing appears in The Missing Slate, Whirlwind, Verse-Virtual, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, previously in TheNewVerse.News, and numerous other publications. Darrell cut short his career as a university editor to be the arbiter of his own words. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

TIS THE SEASON

by Howie Good

A street person
with fingers as fat

as sausages holds
a piece of cardboard,

Kindness Is Karma
shakily written on it

in black Sharpie. Just
do what everyone does.

Pretend not to see him
and walk straight past.

Tears can drown even
the strongest swimmer.


Howie Good is the recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his new collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

CAROLING AND CAJOLING 2016

by Earl J. Wilcox

Our noisy, family klatch huddles
in foggy shadows from yellow
porch lights. A somber pine cone
wreath hangs on a weathered door.
Over nog, mincemeat pie, nuts,
we have harangued, sneered, shouted
both about donkeys and elephants not
in the room tonight, intense beyond
scavenger hunt passion. Time comes
to venture into a cold night, proclaim
joy and peace, three kings, a little town
in Bethlehem, the virgin, a manger.
My vociferous uncle, between sniffles,
hugs me close, though ten minutes
earlier he and I stood face to face,
our political galaxies eons apart,
colliding beyond reconciliation.

Earl Wilcox is a member of  two families who have been singing carols together for the past forty-five years.

CREDO

by Catherine Wald






I believe in The Messiah.

Especially when the
soprano sings
Rejoice
great-
ly.

Rejoice isn’t a word
that is bandied
about much
these days,
which is
too bad.

On the other hand, I
don’t miss the
references to
sin, spitting
and smiters.

Here’s
my confession: I
love music more than
religion, more than God,
way more than country.

All the mighty chorales
of Paradise could only
play second fiddle to
a well-honed coloratura.

If Hell has the tunes, vocal
acrobatics and orchestration,
that’s where you’ll find me


Catherine Wald’s chapbook Distant, burned-out stars was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. Poems have appeared in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Dragonfly, Friends Journal, J Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, "Metropolitan Diary" (The New York Times), Minerva Rising, Quarterday Review, The Lyric and Westchester Review.  She is author of The Resilient Writer: Tales of Triumph and Rejection from 23 Top Authors (Persea 2004).

DECEMBER

by Clara B. Jones 

Image source: Gawker

It's December so I bought lights brighter than the sallow skin of my guardian who is nice enough but never invites me to Christmas dinner since the five-year-old is afraid of robots. My surrogate said, On a scale of 1 to 5, how much would you like to spend the day at Starbucks®? I decided to walk because humanoids ask me personal questions when they corner me alone. Are you happy? Do you want a mate? Do you wish a mechanical family had adopted you? Starbucks® promotes diversity so no one stares when I order peppermint latte and a cranberry scone though a little girl in line called me, Tin Man®—a slight more amusing than offensive. Besides, I am superior to anyone here since my microchips are programmed with the complete works of Charles Dickens, and the Mayor invited me to play The Christmas Carol in the town square at six. My performance will be bot-streamed to my Facebook® page, and I have habituated to the bullying I receive in public since a technician dampened my sensory registers that should function well until my expiration date next year. The Mayor asked me, On a scale of 1 to 5, how close do you want to stand to the Wise Men? I pretended not to hear him since it sounded like a trick question.

Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Silver Spring, MD (USA). As a woman of color, she writes about the “performance” of identity & power & conducts research on experimental poetry & radical publishing. Clara is author of three chapbooks, & her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous venues.

THE GIFTS

by Carolyn Gregory

Some will order honeycomb soap
with its fragrance and texture
true to nature, small gifts of pollen and wax

though others go gluttonous
with chicken wings and pizza,
downing Virgin Margaritas
blended in the Cuisinart

while they dance down victory steps
to waltz among Southern Belles
in pink and yellow crinoline,
forgetting each promise with a smile.

Oh, honeycomb and frankincense,
the simple gifts of Christmas.
May they outlast the bombast
and rooster fights that will soon commence!

Carolyn Gregory has published poems and music reviews in American Poetry Review, Cutthroat, Main Street Rag, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ygdrasil, Seattle Review. Her first and second books were published by Windmill Editions in Florida.

HOUSE CLEANING REQUIRED

by Howard Winn

They lifted up the corner of the Internet carpet
and exposed the filthiness and rat droppings
as well as ordinary dirt of life that is
part of the way in which some people live
and think and lie when truth and cleanliness
is uncomfortable for the mucky minds
who dream up the details of a life which
enriches them despite the facts of science
which gets in the way of what they want
to believe when that knowledge is inconvenient
as well as what they want the gullible to
think is the truth when it is really just a
pile of dirt mixed with mouse droppings.

Howard Winn's work has been published in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Descant. Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. His latest work is Acropolis, a novel published by Propertius Press. He is Professor of English at SUNY-Dutchess.

ANKARA 19 DECEMBER 2016

by Tad Gruchalla-Wesierski

When the hammer came down
The room had been cleared
Russian head pressed to the floor
He could not bolt for the door.

The room had been cleared
The innocent were safe
Russian could not bolt for the door
The sentence had been executed.

The innocent were safe
The reasons were reported
The sentence had been executed
The screaming was recorded

The reasons were reported
“Do not forget Syria”
The screaming was recorded
“Allahu akbar. Do not forget Aleppo”

Do not forget Syria
Where Russian government had no jurisdiction
“Allahu akbar. Do not forget Aleppo”
The city the Russian government cluster bombed

Where Russian government had no jurisdiction
The innocent were collateral damage
The city the Russian government cluster bombed
It was easy to execute the Russian sentence.

The innocent were collateral damage
Though they breathed, ate rats and screamed
It was easy to execute the Russian sentence.
They did not have Russian mothers.

Though they breathed, ate rats and screamed
Their last words “Don’t forget Aleppo!”
They did not have Russian mothers.
The city needed to be cleared.

Their last words “Don’t forget Aleppo!”
Perhaps made the Russian think “But,
the city needed to be cleared.”
When the hammer came down.

Tad Gruchalla-Wesierski is a Canadian and writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction in Canmore, Alberta, Canada or wherever else he may happen to be.  He was drawn to this vocation after a 30-year career as a corporate and international lawyer.  “The practice of law was a tourniquet on the flow of words,” he said “but now that it’s removed, my words can pulse down unused canals to where they should pool”.

SHORT DAYS

Widely-published writer Lewis Gardner blogs here.

YELP REVIEW: NORTH CAROLINA STATEHOUSE

by Jesse Bradley

Here, the sorest losers are a swarm
of wasps; they treat democracy
like a neck trickling with sweat.

With enough stings, your throat swells
until the protest dies
before it can leave your tongue.


J. Bradley is the winner of Five [Quarterly]'s 2015 e-chapbook contest for fiction.

FLEEING MOSUL

by Seree Zohar

Between 700 and 1,000 people arrive daily from the embattled city of Mosul to the stretch of UN-run refugee camps just 20 kilometers east of the city's outskirts. —CNN, December 18, 2016. Photo: Iraqi IDPs (internally displaced people ) from fighting in the village of Shora, south of Mosul, reach an Iraqi army checkpoint on the northern outskirts of Qayyarah, which was liberated from ISIS but is still engulfed in thick black smoke from oil wells set ablaze by the retreating militants. IDP’s who reach Qayyarah are then taken to the Ja’dah IDP camp, October 2016. Ivor Prickett—UNHCR via Time.

Homing pigeon launched through dawn, your rhythm alights on me,
fingers, gloats, dehisces: prayer, your cadence chooses me.

White flag?  We hadn't time to buy one.  And nothing here stays white.
Brethren!  We are light!  Scourges thunder news to me.

Amorphous tented Mama,  my weary footsteps echo yours.
Did I once beg for makeup?  To age so young no more amuses me.

On red-moist stone the thrashing dove’s heart seeks its startled head
as the moon shatters her mirror.  A hone-edged screeching nooses me.

In gasps accursed by memory, sounds palpitate, untongued.
Sheared of speech, my youngster throat: its grunted coo accuses me.

They thrill to this: to snatch and strip, recast their prophet’s land
where, slim as a rising blade, a martyr grooms, then bruises, me.

Mama, snatch up your hem and run, for torpor now diffuses me.
My spilling psyche frays.  My throwaway martyr loses me.


Seree Zohar has work published or forthcoming in various print and online venues.

LEAVING ALEPPO

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

An older man was evacuated from a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Credit Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, December 15, 2016

single line they walk
besieged eyes merely looking forward
forward one step in front of another
tired beyond tired
fatigued beyond fatigued
weary beyond weary
their sorrow faceless like themselves
their burden a city of ruins
they will carry forward
in their eyes their hearts
forward one step in front of another

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and a poem to be published in Down the Dark River edited by Philp Kolin.  Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released September 1, 2015.

RETURNING AMERICA TO GREATNESS: A TRUE STORY ABOUT GIRLS IN EARLY 1970s DETROIT

by Sue Reed Crouse

Image source: bOiNGbOiNG

One summer afternoon, L walked alone to the party store and bought a few ropes of Bubs Daddy Sour Apple gum. Past tiny houses, owned by the UAW dads, Mustangs on blocks in the garages; her world of city-wide curfews and cars. The Boys from the next block, armed with sticks, rounded the corner whipping leaves from low-hanging branches. They were old enemies from the Worm Wars, which had tapered off when the girls lost their fear of worms. At the height of The Wars, The Boys had ambushed them, tied them to the fence behind Mr. Taylor’s garage, and doused them with transmission fluid pumped from a tank he kept on hand. The girls hid their red, oily clothes from their mothers who would likely scold, boys will be boys. They were older now, yet she could still smell the oil, like scorched plastic, and taste it. Hey, The Boys mumbled, wanna see something cool? Toward the alley, behind the hardware, L followed. As she offered gum, Frank, grease under his fingernails, reached for the neck of her blue-flowered top and ripped, leaving her half naked in shadow with a scratch down her chest. L crouched against the cold wall of the hardware and worried about being grounded. There was M, back speckled with bruises which the girls saw when Miss G made her change into gym clothes. Attempting a smirk, M said that her boyfriend Ryan had gone all the way on her in the gravel behind the strip mall. Some of the girls were impressed because Ryan was in high school; others called M a slut. No one thought victim. There was C who was beautiful and didn’t care about The Boys. One day, she came to school with bruised arms and scratches on her face. A group of jocks, led by Chuck, knocked her off her high horse. They had held her down and scratched her face with open safety pins. Everyone said they did more, too, but C stopped talking that year and walked with her arms crossed and head down. T was playing the new record, Cherokee People for Larry when he shoved his hand down the front of her jeans. N was held down in the back of the school bus while The Boys took turns groping under her blouse. All the girls had their bra straps snapped. Are you a turtle? No? Then why do you snap! Back then, the girls knew that boys would be boys. Back then, the girls knew that The Boys needed to fuel their locker-room talk. Back then, girls learned that humiliation came with their gender, just like their monthly periods and sometimes, it seemed, more frequently. Back then, is where half of the electorate wishes to return. Back then, promises the president-elect, king of locker-room talk, sexual molester, voyeur, fan of violence, now on his third (and ever younger) beauty-queen wife, is where he will lead us.

Sue Reed Crouse is a 2011 graduate of the Foreword Program, a two-year poetry apprenticeship at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Much of her work is elegiac in nature, exploring themes of grief and loss after losing Laura, her 20 year-old daughter in 2008. Finding fresh ways to explore this universal theme through image-driven poetry helps her navigate the sorrow and, hopefully, help others who grieve. Crouse’s work appears in Verse Wisconsin, The Aurorean (Showcase Poet), The Talking Stick (First Prize, Honorable Mention), Grey Sparrow, Earth’s Daughters, Damselfly Press, Midway Journal, Sleet Magazine, Unhinged, Little Lantern Press and a chapbook entitled Gatherings: A Foreword Anthology. Her manuscript One Black Shoe was a finalist for the Backwaters Prize last year.